CWF: CITIZENS’ WEALTH FUND.

(Whitepaper)

Proposal: Citizens' Wealth Fund

Introduction

The Citizens' Wealth Fund represents a transformative step towards ensuring the long-term prosperity and security of all UK citizens. It aims to establish a wealth fund, owned directly and equally by every citizen, independent of government control. This initiative is a response to various challenges including national security threats, financial crises, and social issues stemming from privatisation and inequality.

Rationale

1. National Security Threats: Privatisation in sectors like Energy, Water, Food, and Housing has increased vulnerabilities. Control over these services is crucial for security and resilience.

2. Financial Crisis: Economic downturns deeply impact citizens. A wealth fund can offer stability and act as a financial safety net.

3. Financial Inequality: Addressing growing wealth disparities to prevent social unrest.

4. Cost of Living Crisis: Investing in initiatives to alleviate living expenses.

5. Mental Health and Poverty: Tackling financial insecurity to improve mental health and reduce poverty.

6. Homelessness and Poverty-Related Crime: Focusing on affordable housing to combat homelessness and related crimes.

7. Economic Instability: Stabilizing the economy by investing in essential services and industries.

Implementation

The fund will start with a £100 billion investment in citizen-owned enterprises (COEs) across key sectors:

• Renewable Energy: Enhancing energy security and reducing emissions.

• Clean Drinking Water and Waste Management: Infrastructure investments for water and waste processing.

• Food Independence: Supporting domestic food production for security.

• Housing: Addressing housing shortages with 500,000 new homes annually.

Timeline

Immediate action is crucial. The 2024 general election offers a window for a progressive party to launch the Citizens' Wealth Fund, aligning with the public's interest.

Objectives

• 2025-2030: By 2030, ensure the supply of basic human needs - energy, water, food, and housing, are produced by COEs (Citizen Owned Enterprises).

• 2030 - 2050: Reinvest profits for growth, focusing on ethical and sustainable investments.

• 2050: Use the fund's returns for education, healthcare, and private pensions, reducing state expenditure and national debt.

• 2075: Address the impacts of automation with a citizen dividend, ensuring a basic income or access to essential services in a highly automated economy.

Financial Details per Company

• Energy Co: CAPEX £60 billion, Annual Profit £56.25 billion.

• Water Co: CAPEX £10 billion, Annual Profit £3.78 billion.

• Food Co: CAPEX £10 billion, Annual Profit £8-£20 billion.

• Construction Co: CAPEX £20 billion, Annual Profit £75 billion.

• Total: CAPEX £120 billion, Annual Revenue £294.9 - £418.3 billion, Profit £143.03 - £167.03 billion.

Growth Projections: 2025 - 2050

• Projected total amounts including compound interest at rates from 3% to 10%.

• By 2050, the fund could grow to between £5.098 trillion and £20.828 trillion, depending on the interest rate.

5-Year Plan: 2051-2056

1. Year 1: Pay off UK Citizens Mortgages - £1.6 Trillion.

2. Year 2: Buy back ALL UK land - £2 Trillion.

3. Year 3: Provide housing for all UK citizens.

4. Year 4: Investments in Education, Healthcare, Private Pensions, and Regional Credit Unions.

5. Infrastructure Projects: Green Hydrogen, Green Steel, Waste Management, etc.

Conclusion

The Citizens' Wealth Fund is an ambitious proposal that promises to address significant challenges facing the UK. By putting people at the centre of its strategy and investing in essential services, it can create a more secure, equitable, and prosperous future for all citizens. The upcoming general election in 2024 presents an ideal opportunity for its implementation

White Paper: Citizens' Wealth Fund

Introduction

The Citizens' Wealth Fund (CWF) is a groundbreaking proposal to establish a Sovereign/Social wealth fund in the UK, owned equally by all citizens. This initiative seeks to rectify issues arising from privatisation, including national security threats and socio-economic instability, through direct citizen engagement in key sectors.

Why Establish a Citizens' Wealth Fund?

1. National Security Threats: Privatisation has exposed the UK to vulnerabilities in energy, water, food, and housing security.

2. Financial Crisis and Inequality: The CWF aims to address economic disparities and buffer against financial downturns.

3. Cost of Living and Social Issues: The fund targets the alleviation of living costs, mental health issues, poverty, homelessness, and poverty-related crime.

4. Economic Instability: By reinvesting in critical domestic sectors, the CWF seeks to foster a more stable and equitable economy.

How Will the CWF Operate?

• Initial Investment: £100 billion dedicated to establishing UK-based citizen-owned enterprises (COEs).

• Sector Focus: Renewable energy, clean water and waste management, food independence, and housing.

• Strategic Planning: Timely implementation aligning with potential political shifts in the 2024 general election.

Objectives and Milestones

• 2025: Establish a robust supply chain of basic needs (energy, water, food, and housing) through COEs.

• 2030 - 2050: Profits reinvested in the CWF for sustainable and ethical growth.

• 2050: Utilization of the CWF's returns for funding education, healthcare, and pensions, while reducing state borrowing.

• 2075 and Beyond: Preparing for an AI and robotics-driven economy with a focus on a citizen dividend in a highly automated world.

Financial Breakdown and Projections

• Energy Co.: £60 billion investment, aiming for 558 TWh annual energy production.

• Water Co.: Reclaiming water utilities and building desalination plants.

• Food Co.: Diversifying food sources through innovative farming methods.

• Construction Co.: Building affordable modular homes, with a focus on rent-to-own schemes.

• Growth Projections: Compounded interest estimates from 2025 to 2050 show potential growth to several trillion pounds, greatly benefiting the UK economy.

The 25-Year Plan (2025 - 2050)

• A comprehensive strategy focused on establishing and growing COEs.

• Balancing immediate needs with long-term investment strategies.

The 5-Year Plan (2051 - 2056): Citizens’ Dividend

• Year 1: Addressing housing debt.

• Year 2: Land acquisition for public welfare.

• Year 3-4: Focusing on social infrastructure like education and healthcare.

• Infrastructure Investments: Emphasizing sustainable and green technologies.

The Citizens' Wealth Fund is not just a financial mechanism but a visionary approach towards a more secure, equitable, and sustainable future for the UK. It requires immediate action, innovative management, and a commitment to societal welfare. With its implementation, the UK can set a global example of how to harness collective wealth for the collective good.

The Citizens' Wealth Fund: A Blueprint for Tomorrow

In this document, I propose a transformative vision for fostering economic resilience and shared prosperity across the United Kingdom. The cornerstone of this vision is the establishment of a Citizens' Wealth Fund (CWF), rooted in the principles of equity and fairness. This initiative seeks to address the widening gap of inequality that has been unfolding over the past four decades, offering a collective path toward a robust and inclusive economy.

Envision a society where everyday actions contribute directly to individual and communal well-being:

Imagine your electricity bill not only powering your home but also fuelling your future pension savings.

Picture each cup of tea brewed not only offering comfort but also investing in your children's education.

Consider every apple eaten supporting not just your health but also the vital services provided by the NHS and its dedicated staff.

Visualize sustainably farmed seafood not only nourishing your family but also contributing to the UK's self-sufficiency in food, reducing our carbon footprint, and revitalizing marine ecosystems.

Contemplate every new home constructed paving the way for more affordable housing, thus ensuring secure and stable living conditions for an increasing number of UK families.

This is not merely a dream; it is an achievable reality through the collaborative creation of the Citizens' Wealth Fund.

The CWF proposes the formation of an investment fund dedicated to generating and preserving wealth for all British citizens, now and into the future. This fund aims to unite the UK's populace as equal stakeholders in a trust designed for the mutual benefit of all, transcending divisions and fostering a sense of shared purpose and destiny.

The CWF would not only focus on wealth generation for future generations but also strive to tackle pervasive issues such as financial inequality, energy and water security, the housing shortage, and social disparities. To achieve these goals, the fund would initiate the creation of four Citizen Owned Enterprises (COEs) in critical sectors such as renewable energy, water, agriculture, and construction. These enterprises would serve as the primary engines for generating steady revenue streams by providing essential services that meet fundamental human needs.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) worldwide, holding assets ranging from $500 billion to $1.4 trillion, demonstrate the potential of state-owned investment funds to significantly impact a nation's economy and its citizens' well-being. With SWFs controlling approximately 10% of the global economy, the absence of a similar fund in the UK highlights a missed opportunity for economic enhancement and societal benefit.

The establishment of the CWF would necessitate an initial investment, potentially sourced from governmental transfer payments, reserves from state-owned resources, or proceeds from privatizations. A suggested starting point could be a £100 billion transfer payment, creating a solid foundation for the fund's growth and the subsequent development of the COEs.

By investing in infrastructure projects such as offshore wind farms, desalination plants, aeroponic farms, and modular housing construction, the CWF would not only address immediate needs but also lay the groundwork for a sustainable and forward-looking economy. These initiatives would create jobs, stimulate existing UK businesses, and ensure the provision of essential services.

The revenues generated by the COEs could fund scholarships, healthcare, pensions, and social welfare programs, directly contributing to reducing financial inequality and enhancing the quality of life for all UK citizens. Additionally, reinvestments in emerging sectors like green hydrogen and zero-carbon construction materials could further secure the UK's economic future.

The establishment of the Citizens' Wealth Fund and its associated Citizen Owned Enterprises represents a bold step toward reimagining the UK's economic landscape. It offers a path to a society where every citizen is an investor in our collective future, where prosperity is shared, and where the basic needs of all are securely met. Together, we can build this world—a world of shared wealth, opportunity, and security for every citizen of the United Kingdom.

Introducing the Citizen’s Wealth Fund: Building a better tomorrow.

1. Introduction

   The Citizens’ Wealth Fund (CWF) is a proposal to create an investment fund to grow wealth on behalf of all British Citizens for future generations to come. To bring the divided citizens of the UK together as common shareholders in a trust to the equal benefit of all.

   The CWF’s primary objectives would be to generate wealth for future generations but it would also act to address financial inequality, energy security, water security, the housing crisis and the social divide here in the UK.

   As such, the first act of the CWF would be to establish four Citizen Owned Enterprises (COEs) to generate annual returns on investment (ROI) to be placed into long term investments in both, domestic and international financial markets.

   By creating COEs in utility sectors like renewable energy and water, as well as agriculture and construction, the CWF will be providing goods and services that are inelastic in demand, as they meet the basic physiological needs and biological requirements for human survival such as heat, light, sustenance and shelter, and therefore provide confident and steady annual revenue streams.

   The newly established companies, as well as being profitable, could also play a crucial role in tackling key issues facing human civilization today such as; Climate Change, Energy Crisis, Financial Inequality, Food shortages, Housing Crisis, Population Growth and Water Shortages.

2. Sovereign Wealth Funds

   A wealth fund, either sovereign or social, is a state-owned investment fund comprised of money generated by the government, that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity funds or hedge funds. Wealth funds are designed to provide a benefit for a country’s economy and its citizens.

   Wealth funds are usually set up for a targeted purpose, this may be to act as a source of venture capital for the private sector, to pay for scholarships for further and higher education and in some instances to establish a pension fund.

   Wealth funds have been established all around the world. The biggest five are; Norway Government Pension Fund Global, China Investment Corporation, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Kuwait Investment Authority and Hong Kong Monetary Authority Investment Portfolio who each control assets under management ranging from $500 billion to $1.4 trillion.

3. Assets Under Management (AUM)

   Assets under management (AUM) by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) worldwide have risen since 2008 to 2021 from $4 trillion to $9 trillion. The Global Economy projection for 2021 is $93.86 trillion, which means that SWFs currently control approximately 10% of the global economy and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland does not currently have an active Sovereign Wealth Fund.

4. Funding a fund

   Common sources of seed funding for a SWF are; surplus revenues in reserves from state-owned natural resources such as oil and gas, trade surpluses, bank reserves that may accumulate from budgeting excesses, foreign currency operations, money from privatizations, and governmental transfer payments. It is the latter that we are interested in exploring.

   A governmental transfer payment is a redistribution of income and wealth by means of the government making a one time payment, without goods or services being received in return.

5. £100 Billion Transfer Payment

   A UK Citizens’ Wealth Fund could be established with a £100 billion governmental transfer payment to an investment fund managed independently from the state, on behalf of all UK Citizens. The reason for the investment fund to be independent from the government is the need for long term planning and investment into infrastructure projects required to revolutionise the UK economy, which can not be achieved with governments changing every four years of so.

6. Citizen Owned Enterprise (COE)

   A one time, £100 billion transfer payment, would be utilised as seed capital investment to create four brand new Citizen Owned Enterprise’s (COE); a renewable energy company, a water company, a food company and a modular construction company, with the goal of generating annual revenues to be invested by the CWF into the financial markets to provide financial security for future generations to come.

   The reason for focussing on energy, water, food and construction, is that these are all sectors universally needed and inelastic in demand and therefore provide secure revenue streams.

7. Citizens’ Wealth Fund (CWF)

   The CWF would act as a mechanism to provide an equity share in the private markets generating economic wealth for everyone. With this one act we could kick start a brand new economy fit for the 21st Century and the challenges that lie ahead by building infrastructure such as; Offshore Wind Farms, Coastal Seawater Desalination Plants, Subterranean Aeroponic Farms in former coal mines, Underwater Ocean Farms, and Offsite Construction Plants for building affordable housing, offices, schools and hospitals.

   This will also enable us to to create thousands of new jobs whilst meeting the needs of the population and our environmental commitments to our global partners around the world in tackling climate change, transforming the UK economy and making it more robust for generations to come.

   Furthermore, the initial £100 billion investment and the associated infrastructure projects will create work for already existing UK businesses and stimulate the UK economy from day one.

8. Dividends

   By investing in natural monopolies, like renewable energy and water, on behalf of the commons, we could generate large revenues & profits and distribute dividends in the form of further and higher education scholarships, healthcare of the highest standard, generous private pensions and in time social welfare programmes with the goal of increasing financial equality and security, to alleviate poverty and poverty related crime.

   Investments could be made into key infrastructure projects, with the focus of providing the UK with; energy security, water security, food security, shelter and financial security.

9. Research & Development

   In addition, through future reinvestments of the annual revenues from the newly created businesses, the Citizens’ Wealth Fund will be able to grow year on year and expand into emerging fields such as Green Hydrogen, Green Steel and Zero Carbon Concrete, all of which have potential market values worth over £100 Billion+ per annum each.

10. Poverty and potential lost.

    "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

    Stephen Jay Gould

    I think we can all agree that it is bad business to let machinery rust that can otherwise be used to increase the efficiency of the production line. The same is true of the wasted potential of many children from poorer economic backgrounds who do not get a full education.

    How many Johannes Gutenbergs (Inventor of the printing press), Alan Turings (Father of Computer Science and Inventor of one of the first computers), Marie Curies (Pioneered the use of radiation in medicine) and Watsons and Cricks (Discovered the double helix ladder structure of DNA) have flown under the radar (Invented by Heinrich Hertz) because they were born into the wrong family, in the wrong neighbourhood, in the wrong country?

    Another dreamer, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and social justice campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 1967.

    “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.

    It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them.

    The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

    “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

    Martin Luther King Jr.

11. Universal Basic Income (UBI)/Citizen Dividend

    In 1969, Republican President Richard Nixon, pursued the idea of a basic income for the poorest families in America guaranteeing a family of four $1,600 a year, equivalent to roughly $10,000 in 2016. Unfortunately the motion did not get passed due to Nixon’s uncertainty around the possibility of creating a lazy population despite promising results in trials carried out around the time.

    However, since the failed policy there have been various studies carried out around the world providing evidence to support the theory that a guaranteed income has largely positive outcomes not only for the person receiving the income but in some cases the entire family or the recipient and their future generations have benefited having risen from a poor economic background to the middle classes in a generation due to higher education or starting a business.

    We must defeat financial inequality and provide a first rate education to all able and willing.

12. Conclusion

    When consumer confidence is high consumers buy more goods and services. When consumer confidence is low consumers tend to save more and spend less, which is bad for the economy. Therefore, we need confident consumers to maintain a fast paced active and buoyant economy. To achieve this level of confidence in our economy, all citizens must be secure in the knowledge that their basic human requirements for survival are safely within reach.

    Homes must be affordable.

    There can not be a choice between energy or food, both must be available at a price affordable to all.

    Clean drinking water must be affordable and continue to flow in order to maintain levels of hygiene and hydration quenching the thirst of all.

    By building millions of new affordable homes powered by clean renewable energy and feeding our families with locally sourced food and water, we will be providing security from the dependence on international supply chains in an uncertain future with a growing global population and demand for the basic human needs, which can lead to inflation.

    If we are to create a robust economy, the protection and provision of these core elements, must be none negotiable.

    By establishing the Citizen Owned Enterprises and the Citizens’ Wealth Fund for long term investments, we will be creating a bond, connecting every Citizen in a commitment to one another, as shareholders with a common objective of financial security and a secure existence for all here in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.